Too many companies hire the best candidate from their shortlist.
No, I didn’t make a typo in that sentence. Hiring the best candidate—the most qualified, the one with the highest levels of each sought-for skill, the smartest, best track-record, stand out candidate—is almost always a mistake.
Don’t get me wrong. “Best” is, you know, a worthy goal. In their quest to be best, some people accomplish a great deal. I like best as much as the next guy.
But best what?
How smart are you?
I know a company (well, I know more than one, truth be told) where hiring the “best” means hiring the smartest. Score a big-number IQ and move to the head of the class. Best and brightest are, for them, the same. The consequences of this policy include a worryingly high incidence of “out” during the “up or out” career cycle and too much senior executive time spent managing problematic prima donnas.
So, should they have recruited the dopes?
Of course not. But rather than recruit the absolute smartest, they should draw their candidates from a pool of the decidedly smart-enough. Intelligence, for them, should be table-stakes. Final selection should be on the basis of fit with the job. Which candidates have the competencies, preferences and capabilities the job demands, at or very close to the level the job demands?
Recruit someone with much higher-than-necessary capability or competency levels for the job and you risk having a bored, frustrated and unfulfilled employee.
That, all too often, happens when the “best” candidate is hired.
Candidates, applicants and employees
Part of the problem comes from the intense focus, in today’s recruiting approaches, on the candidate, the applicant. I hear, “This applicant has an excellent pedigree”; or “I really like her, she came across as very polished, very smart, in the interview”; or “The awards and honors he has won are very impressive.”
Some people are great candidates. Some are terrific employees, excellent performers. The correlation between the two, regrettably, isn’t great.
What matters is not the quality of candidacy but the quality of work. What matters is not the absolute level of a competency or skill, but the right level and fit of that competency or skill for a specific job.
Jobs, like people, all have different profiles. The competencies required by a pharmaceutical sales rep are not the same as those demanded of an html programmer. At university, I knew future world-class physicists who couldn’t write a coherent paragraph; and I knew future world-class authors who struggled mightily in the “physics for poets” course.
I know a lot of people, you do too I am sure, who are really good at their job but weren’t very good at other jobs. And I know a lot of people who aren’t very good at their job – or who are out of a job at present – but who would be fantastic at a different job.
Don’t be fooled into thinking high quality equals high performance. Focus on getting the best-matched future employee for your job, not the best-credentialed candidate. You will see the difference where it counts: in performance.
Paul Basile loves variety: he has worked in five industries, has lived and worked in seven countries on three continents. He is founder and CEO of Matchpoint Careers, Inc, his third start-up, using science to match people with the right jobs and match jobs with the right people. He has degrees from Princeton University and MIT (beginning his career as a rocket scientist…).
May 2, 2011 at 7:39 pm
Best part of this: “smart-enough” candidates. Teams need balance. They rarely need extremes. You generally think of raw materials as a commodity, and you are willing to pay at market for that commodity. You order exactly the materials you need – a sufficient amount.
People are a commodity as well. Not an inexpensive, one-is-as-good-as-the-next kind of commodity, but there is a market, and there is rarely a reason to find and hire the most highly qualified. “Qualified enough” is sufficient.
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May 3, 2011 at 11:57 am
just goes to show, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to write a great article. hey, wait a second . . .
May 5, 2011 at 11:35 am
The “best” candidate on a piece of paper might be the worst addition to your office. Bringing in a new personality into the workspace can severely alter the mood and productivity of the office, for better or for worse. You can’t just look at one factor when deciding who to hire. You aren’t hiring a factor, you’re hiring a person.
May 10, 2011 at 1:17 am
I couldn’t agree more. I would even add that, usually, the so called “excellent candidates” are not team players and spend to much time doing things on their own without any real regard to what others have to say.
May 10, 2011 at 8:26 am
Interesting idea to not hire the smartest. I tend to agree that that doesn’t really guarantee you anything. I’d posted quite a while ago on the subject of Emotional Intelligence. People with a higher EQ do tend to be more successful in life. Some feel this is more important than IQ. After reading this, I’m wondering if it makes sense to hire somone “smart enough” in the IQ category but who has a high EQ. What does everyone else think?
May 10, 2011 at 8:29 am
The difficulty is getting an opportunity when you are the right fit, if not the best candidate on paper. There are so many out there looking for that perfect person, they don’t want to accept anything less than the “best” candidates, so a person who might be the right fit is not even interviewed. It’s an employer’s market, right? So, pick the best.
Believe me, I’ve seen it in action over the years. That person who looks best on paper winds up floundering, for whatever reason. Once I was able to see someone my manager had rejected as not being as good as another applicant. We worked for a large organization, and another group had picked up the “not the best” candidate, who had not only cleaned up all sorts of problems that group had but also streamlined tons of processes and had a former problem child working like a well-oiled machine. Our best candidate? Lasted six months until he got an offer that involved more money. We’d been through three new hires and our “not good enough” person was thriving and progressing with another group.
Another example? The company I’m working for now (and that I’m trying to leave) has an opening for a position that on paper is perfect for me. It’s even a higher rate of pay than I have now (don’t get me started on that) and I have every last thing they want, although the senior management team probably has no idea. But would I be the right person? Probably not. I don’t really fit in the corporate culture, and knowing the person to whom this position would report, I would be completely miserable. Most sane people would, but that’s another story. Point is, even though on paper I might be perfect if given the opportunity by the powers that be, I wouldn’t be a good fit.
If we could stop looking at our little laundry lists of “must-haves” for candidates and positions, we could probably open ourselves up to a world of experience and perspective that we’re missing by focusing only on the tidy list of things that we feel like we have to see before we can even consider an applicant.
May 15, 2011 at 10:08 pm
You have made some excellent points; a good manager always allows room for growth for all of their employees, especially new recruits. What has to be said now, is that the most astute HR managers will not necessarily demand loads of experience, because in doing so, the potential ideal fit will be ignored – for that “catch-22 lack of experience”. I say to the HR managers out there: The best fit are the capable and motivated, not the experienced [old shoes]. Note however, middle-aged candidates are most capable and motivated, due to their lack of remainding working years combined with their new “opportunity” to fully engage their capability and potential.
June 22, 2011 at 10:32 am
Good call on this topic. I completely agree. In my industry the same goes for internships. Whether a student is paired correctly (both culturally and in proficiency) for a position is the key for a successful experience. That is why we are beginning to focus on company culture and project this to our users (aka Community Pages.) Through Q&A with company recruiters and ‘about’ company videos, students understand what they are applying to instead of few empty paragraphs many businesses place on listings. This also allows the hiring manager to work towards the best fit, not the best looking resume. Great post!
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